What can I really say about this one? I needed this movie this year.
I know I’ve said this before on this blog, but I’m not going
to mince words. 2020 will be known as
the worst movie year of my lifetime. And
it’s basically by the default of not nearly enough quantity and quality. It’s not a fair claim to make due to the pandemic,
but we can’t control the present no matter how hard I wish we could do a better
job at doing that. I mean what little we’ve
gotten hasn’t really been all that impressive, while the films we got before
movie theaters shut down didn’t really knock my socks off either.
Which is going to make my personal best and worst of the
year lists especially difficult. When
films like “Sonic the Hedgehog” and “Birds of Prey”, films I thought were
generally okay but nothing special, have decent shots at making my best list,
you know this year needed more quality films.
Hell I’m happy Disney+ finally caved and is planning to launch all their
pandemic delayed films for additional surcharges. It means new material for me to consume. And hopefully other studios take notes and
start doing the same. I miss movie
theaters as much as the next guy, but not at the expense of risking my
health. And with cases getting worse and
worse, we just have to accept that it will be even longer than initially
anticipated before movie theaters open back up again.
So with that said, I’ve really had to stretch and find
material to review. And what better ways
to find more material than by checking out original films for streaming
services. Last week, I talked about Will
Ferrell’s latest comedy and it only makes sense to talk about another comedian I
adore. This one more so than the last:
I don’t know if this is an unpopular opinion, but screw
it. Andy Samberg will be looked back at
as one of the most underrated comedy stars of this time frame. I mean the guy can do it all. He can do comedy rap, he stars in one of the
best network comedies of the past ten years, plus he was one of the first viral
video stars of the YouTube generation.
And yet he still isn’t close to being considered an A-lister. Why is that?
A guy with this many talents should absolutely be considered one of the best
in the business. Why hasn’t he reached
that next level yet?
Probably because he has blown his chance more times than one
can count. His first feature film “Hot
Rod” I really like, but the general public did not find all that special. I can see that. There is only so many times the same joke can
be beaten into the ground so many times before it loses its luster.
His next chance at making that next leap to superstardom was
co-headlining an Adam Sandler movie. Now
this one surely has to work, right? I
mean it worked for Kevin James for a short period of time, why not someone
younger and funnier? ….oh right. “That’s
My Boy” was one of the worst reviewed comedies of all-time. No wonder Adam Sandler immediately greenlit a
sequel to “Grown Ups” to prove that he can still draw major money after this
one flopped.
Now this is the one that has to launch Andy Samberg to the
next level. It’s The Lonely Island’s
first feature film and has an A-list cast plus tons of advertising deals. It’s critically praised. It surely has to make Andy Samberg a
superstar….and yet it flopped even harder than Hot Rod. This was the one that absolutely deserved to
be a star making performance in my eyes.
It’s one of my favorite movies of 2016 and it is absolutely right up my
alley about being a parody of the music industry. But I do understand why this didn’t do
better. Mockumentary style films like
this about certain niche topics like the ins and outs of the music industry
really don’t find financial success.
Even the most well known film from this niche genre, “This Is Spinal Tap”
didn’t take off until it found cult classic success. Which I hope Popstar does as well and seems
to be heading that route.
So yeah, Andy Samberg really hasn’t found that breakthrough
hit up until this point. Yep I said
it. I will be absolutely shocked if this
doesn’t get him closer to superstar status.
Because this movie is excellent.
I absolutely loved every minute of “Palm Springs”. Another movie brainchild from The Lonely
Island trio as they all served as executive producers for this movie. And I can absolutely tell that they had some
sort of influence with bringing fresh original ideas to a different subgenres.
This time, romantic comedies. Most notably taking a lot of the ideas
experimented on from “Groundhog Day”.
What happens when two people get stuck repeating the same day over and
over again? Well of course, they fall in
love. But not in the ways the trailer would
lead you into believing. It will be very
hard avoiding spoilers while talking about this movie so I’m not going to go
too in depth with the story, but I will say this. I stopped trying to figure out where this
movie was going to go after the first reiteration of the same day being
repeated and just went with it. And I had
an absolute blast while doing so. What
this movie does with its entire runtime is so franticly energetic that it
really gives you no time to try and overthink its storytelling. The reworking of this concept is so clever
that I admire every single minute and its one of the rare occasions for me
where I lost track of the runtime and next thing you know, the movie is
over. I can name only a handful of
movies in recent memory that have had this sort of effect on me, so this is a
HUGE plus that cancels out any sort of minuses this movie had, which it barely
had any.
The chemistry between Andy Samberg and Cristin Miloti is
phenomenal for the record. Best
on-screen chemistry by any two leads this year.
For how underrated this post has been about Andy Samberg, this cast is
literally a who’s who of underrated actors and actresses from JK Simmons to Peter
Gallagher, hell even June Squibb is in this movie for a handful of
minutes. But most underrated of them all
is Cristin Miloti. I feel like that she
should be so much bigger than she is. I
mean she was the Mother in How I Met Your Mother for crying out loud. Cristin Miloti is absolutely amazing here as
Sarah and I would be shocked if we don’t see her getting more headline work in
the near future as well. This is a star
making performance playing the originally straight woman to Andy Samberg’s
Nyles, but eventually caving into matching his madness.
As for negatives?
None. I can’t think of any real
negatives. My only negative I’ve ever
seen in regards to this movie was my close friend telling me he felt like they
were stretching what they can get away with when it comes to this concept. And I can see that, but I don’t care. It’s part of the point with this movie. Stream it on Hulu now and let’s make everyone
involved with this bigger stars from first time director, Max Barbakow to fairly new screenwriter Andy Siara. This movie is just that perfect and just what I needed in this grim year for everything. Can't wait to watch this again.
Final Grade: A+
No comments:
Post a Comment